Thanks For Nothing, Nick Maxwell

by Debbie Carbin

  She turns to Glenn’s shoulder and sobs silently.

  ‘Have you phoned the police?’ Hector says.

  She raises her head. Her face is blotchy, puffy, pale. ‘No, I didn’t . . . I wasn’t thinking . . . I just rang you.’

  ‘OK. Glenn?’

  Glenn nods and gets up, taking the phone into the hallway with him. After a few seconds we hear his voice, low and urgent. Hector turns back to Sarah.

  ‘Have you looked all round the house?’

  She nods. ‘Yes, I did. There aren’t many places to hide . . . I’ve checked everywhere. I even . . . ran round the garden, looked under all the plants, behind the shed . . .’

  ‘In the shed?’

  ‘No, no, it’s padlocked.’

  Hector nods. ‘Is there anywhere you can think of he might go? A friend’s house? A special place? Favourite park . . .?’

  She’s shaking her head. ‘No, no, I can’t imagine that he would do that. He just wouldn’t go out on his own . . .’

  Hector puts his hand on her arm. ‘Sarah, he has done it. He has gone out, hasn’t he? Can you think of any reason why he would?’

  Her eyes flick almost imperceptibly at the spot on the sofa where Glenn was just sitting. ‘Only . . .’

  Hector follows her gaze, apparently understanding, and nods. ‘OK. Do you have all the phone numbers of his friends?’

  ‘Yes. But why . . .?’

  He looks at me. ‘Can you ring them all, Rachel? Just in case?’

  I nod, but Sarah is speaking again. ‘No, no, there’s no point, he doesn’t know how to get there.’

  ‘No, I know that, Sarah. But if he knows their address, or even the name of the road . . . someone might . . .’ He pauses, obviously unsure whether or not to say what he’s thinking. ‘Someone might pick him up . . .’

  She doesn’t react. ‘That’s what terrifies me most.’

  Hector moves forward and takes her hands. ‘Sarah, try and remember that just about everyone out there will help him, if they find him. OK? Most people are good people.’

  She nods mutely but it’s small comfort.

  Hector stands up as Glenn comes back into the room. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They’re on their way. They said we should check in his room to see if anything’s missing. If he has run away, we might get an idea of where he’s gone by what he’s taken with him.’

  ‘Right. Sarah, can you go and have a look upstairs with Rachel – check all the rooms – while Glenn and I have a look down here? Make a note of anything that seems to be missing.’

  This is better. Sarah feels it too – actually to be doing something positive. There’s a huge well of pent-up energy, adrenalin, urge to act, which we finally put to use as we hurry up the stairs. Jake’s room looks exactly the same as it did two nights ago. There are no obvious empty spaces on shelves. We go in and stand in the middle of the floor, looking around.

  ‘What do you think?’ I ask Sarah. She’s got her arms wrapped around herself, her mouth open and twisted down as if she’s crying, although she isn’t.

  She shakes her head. ‘I can’t think. I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Right, well, what’s his favourite toy?’

  She looks at me helplessly. ‘I can’t . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, Sarah, you’re mind isn’t working properly at the moment. What about that thing you bought him for his birthday last year – Gameboy?’

  She nods. ‘Yes, that’s probably it.’

  ‘Where does he keep it?’

  She walks over to the bed. ‘It’s usually here on the bedside cabinet. He plays with it in bed.’

  Well, it’s clearly not there. ‘OK, is there anywhere else he might keep it?’

  She shakes her head. ‘There might be, but it was on there this morning. I don’t think he’s played with it today. I can usually hear it, you know, when it’s on.’

  ‘So it looks like he’s got that with him. Can you see anything else that’s missing?’

  She looks around the room, shaking her head, trying to remember. ‘Oh, that bear that Glenn gave him is missing. The one that talks. He’s always got that with him. And his rucksack. His little green frog rucksack. It hangs from the end of his bed and he hardly ever uses it so it never gets moved. It’s gone.’

  It’s really hard to think about a six-year-old boy putting his Gameboy and a teddy bear into a frog rucksack, with some kind of plan in his head. It’s so secretive of him, which is terrible for me to grasp, let alone for poor Sarah.

  Downstairs, Glenn and Hector have not been able to find anything obvious that’s missing. Sarah checks the fridge and other food cupboards and weeps when she finds almost a whole Angel cake and a mini packet of Coco Pops missing. This tiny child believes he will need food while he’s carrying out his plan, and what he chooses to take is cake and Coco Pops.

  There’s a five-pound note missing from Sarah’s purse, and her mobile phone is gone. On this discovery, Hector dials it immediately, but it’s not switched on.

  ‘Of course,’ Glenn says bitterly, sagging under almost unbearable disappointment. ‘How would a six-year-old know that it needs to be switched on?’

  ‘Right,’ Hector says. ‘Glenn and I will go out in the car and look for him. Can you two deal with the police when they get here?’

  ‘Course.’

  He looks at me and jerks his head towards the hallway, so I follow him out there. He touches my arm. ‘Are you all right?’

  I nod.

  ‘Listen, do you think you’ll be all right to look after Sarah, while we’re out? I mean, if we find . . . If it’s bad news . . .’

  ‘It won’t be.’

  He puts his hands either side of my face. ‘Rachel, can you cope here with Sarah, if it’s bad news?’

  How can I answer that? No one knows whether they will be able to cope with that situation, and no one should ever have to find out. I don’t even want to try and imagine what it would be like, as if somehow thinking about it will make it happen. But Hector needs an answer so he can go and hunt with a focused mind. He doesn’t want to be worrying about what’s going on here while he’s out there. Finally I nod, even though I am far from sure that I will cope, I am more sure that I absolutely will not cope, will not be able to think or move or be any use to anyone, least of all my friend Sarah who will be reacting to the worst news she could ever receive.

  ‘OK,’ he says and gives me a smile. ‘I’ve got my mobile phone . . .’

  I nod again. ‘I’ll call you the minute he turns up.’

  He strokes my cheek with a sad smile, hesitates just a second, then turns and strides to the front door. ‘Come on then, Glenn.’

  Glenn emerges from the living room, rubbing his eyes, and the two men leave.

  As soon as they’re gone, my belly solidifies again and freezes my breath in my lungs. Only this time it’s showing me what it can really do. It’s tighter, longer and beginning to be slightly painful. I clench my teeth and fists, holding my breath until it passes. Then I put the kettle on.

  Thousands of images crowd into my mind as I wait for it to boil: a tiny dark shadow, curled in a cold corner, shivering, arms wrapped round himself, angel cake crumbs mingling with the tears on his face; cars that speed along the darkened streets too fast, not expecting suddenly to see a wide-eyed six-year-old out at this time; predators of all kinds, seeing only too readily how to make use of a discovery like this. I know that he is longing for his mummy by now, freezing and frightened, lost and alone, unable to remember his way back, thinking that he’ll never get home again. I shake my head and take two cups of tea through into the living room. As if this is going to make Sarah feel better, but I don’t know what else to do.

  She’s at the window, staring at the dark road, one hand holding back the curtain. I hear her voice, mumbling something quietly and it’s a moment or two before I can make out that she’s saying, ‘Where are you, Jake, where are you?’ over and over.

  ‘I’ve made
you a cup of tea, Sarah,’ I say, holding out the cup.

  She turns to me and takes it, saying, ‘Oh God, Rachel, he’s out there somewhere. Where is he? What’s happening to him? What’s he going through, right this minute?’ I shake my head, but she doesn’t want an answer. ‘And why did he go? What’s he thinking? What on earth persuaded him that he needed to do this? Where’s he going? He doesn’t know the way, wherever it is.’

  She drops the curtain and moves back to the sofa, putting the mug down on the floor.

  ‘He hates the dark so much he has to have a Thomas the Tank Engine light on in his room all night.’ She says this to the floor.

  I sit forward and touch her arm. ‘Sarah, try and picture all the mums and dads out there. Thousands and thousands of them. Far more than . . . other people. More good people than bad people. I mean, if you found a lost six-year-old what would you do? You’d make sure he was safe, wouldn’t you?’ She looks at me and nods. ‘So that’s probably what will happen. Someone will find him and take him straight to the police station. It’s very unlikely that anything bad . . .’ From the terrified expression on her face, I decide to stop. Just the words ‘anything bad’ immediately makes us both realize what bad things could happen to him. I know that the good people outnumber the bad people, but it’s dark now. Good people are locked safe inside their homes while the rats and night-walkers make the streets their domain until the sun comes up again.

  I’m stroking Plum protectively. He’s pushing a leg, or arm, into me fiercely. It feels for a moment as if he’s going to make a hole. Looking at Sarah, I know that she will not be able to function without the survival of Jake. The end of his life would effectively bring about the end of hers. It’s not occurred to me until now how vulnerable you are once you’re a parent. You become totally dependent on the continuing survival of your child. The child himself, of course, will survive, whatever happens to his parents. If you die, he’ll be cared for by someone else and will recover from your absence in time, scarred by the loss, but not destroyed by it. No amount of time or care will ever mend the bereaved parent.

  These morbid thoughts are interrupted by the doorbell. Sarah’s head jerks up and she looks anxiously towards the door. ‘I’ll go,’ I say, leaping to my feet the way an elephant would, and hurrying along the hallway. I can see through the glass that it’s two police officers standing there, but they might have some news and it might not be good.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs McCarthy, I’m Lorna Daniels and this is my colleague Steve Sparks.’ For one completely brainless, disconnected and self-obsessed moment I am about to say, ‘Oh no, we’re not married yet.’ Then I realize she means Sarah. Of course.

  ‘I’m not Mrs McCarthy, she’s in here.’ I indicate for them to walk down the hall. ‘Is there any news?’

  ‘No, not yet Mrs . . .?’

  ‘Miss actually. Rachel Covington.’

  ‘Ah. Well, Miss Covington, no news yet, I’m afraid, but I’m sure he’ll turn up. They usually do.’

  I stop. ‘Sorry? What did you say?’

  ‘I said they usually turn up.’

  ‘Ah. So six-year-old boys run away a lot, do they?’

  ‘Er, well, not as—’

  ‘And in your experience, they fend for themselves quite successfully out there, do they, overnight?’

  They’ve stopped just outside the living-room door and turned to look at me. ‘Um . . .’

  ‘I imagine there’s a little community out there somewhere, where all the under-seven runaways gather together and look out for each other? Take it in turns to heat milk, read each other a bedtime story? Keep the paralysing terror at bay?’

  They look at each other, then Steve Sparks says, ‘Ah, Miss Covington, I’m sure my colleague didn’t mean any offence by—’

  ‘The point is,’ I interrupt, ‘that Jake’s parents just want him found. They don’t need to hear “He’ll be fine”, or “He’s bound to turn up”, because it won’t make the slightest bit of difference to how they feel all the while their precious child is out there, on his own, at night. All it does is belittle the strength of their feelings.’

  Lorna Daniels is going red. She says, ‘Well, I apologize, Miss Covington. I really didn’t mean to upset anyone.’

  ‘Just stick to the facts from now on, please. That’s what Sarah needs. Not your opinion.’

  I am roaring inside. I feel like I could rip someone’s arms off and swing them round and round my head, shrieking, You’re a fucking imbecile! I have to content myself with clenching and unclenching my fists as the two officers carry on into the living room.

  I hear Sarah stand up, her voice anxiously asking them if they’d heard anything, and the voice that replies is calm and low as it says they haven’t got anything to tell her, but all squad cars in the area have been alerted and as soon as they hear anything, they’ll pass it on. There’s a pause, as if something isn’t being said, and I imagine Daniels pressing her lips together to stop herself from saying something like, ‘Try not to worry, Mrs McCarthy.’ Then Daniels asks Sarah if she wants a cup of tea.

  I’ve got this almost overwhelming urge to be doing something, like a big ball of energy bouncing around inside me, trying to get out. I can’t sit still; I can’t stand still, so I shift from foot to foot, swinging my arms, looking about. My scalp is tingling and my hair feels as if I’ve been rubbing balloons on it. My eyes land on the cupboard under the stairs and on impulse, I open it and pull out the broom, Hoover and dustpan. Daniels comes out of the living room carrying Sarah’s mug, the tea I made her earlier cold and untouched. She smiles at me weakly, ‘’Scuse me,’ then heads towards the kitchen. Right. I’ll go upstairs then.

  Halfway up the stairs, my stomach goes into spasm again, clenching tighter and tighter around poor little Plum, as if condensing him into a tight ball. I try to bend over and this time the pain intensifies a little, moving another couple of notches up the ‘Uh-oh’ scale. I’m very surprised that it would hurt this much – from what I’d read, Braxton Hicks contractions are meant to be painless. And that’s all they are. Just false labour. Nothing else.

  I’m really rubbish at facing facts, aren’t I? I think I’ll call this baby Denial. I mean, Daniel.

  Bending over on the stairs clutching the Hoover in one hand and my belly and dustpan in the other is not easy even when you’re not eight months’ pregnant.

  As soon as it eases, I come back to life and resume dragging the Hoover upstairs. I’m going to give Jake’s room a spring clean. Clear all the shelves off, wipe them down, rearrange the books, give all the other surfaces a polish, clean the windows, make the bed, hoover—

  ‘Er, Miss Covington . . .’ It’s Sparks, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

  I turn. ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you’re going to do some cleaning upstairs, could you please not go into Jake’s room? We need to preserve it as it is, just for the time being.’

  Arses. ‘OK. Fine.’

  Sarah’s room is a bit of a mess. It’s mostly just dirty clothes on the floor so I scoop them up and push the Hoover round. There’s a few cobwebs on the ceiling, too, which are very satisfying to suck up the tube.

  I don’t think there’s much point dwelling on what’s going on in the house. I’m on a one-woman cobweb annihilation exercise, and Sarah is silent and tearful on the sofa, chewing her fingers. She is brought cup of tea after cup of tea, but they all grow cold on the floor. She gets up and walks to the window, pulls the curtain aside, looks out. She goes back to the sofa and sits down. She gets up again. Time ticks on agonizingly slowly. Eventually it is almost eleven o’clock at night and Jake is still not found.

  Let’s go to where Hector and Glenn are, snapping at each other in the car. Looking through the windscreen from the front of the car, we can just make out two pale, frowning faces, hunched forward as near to the dashboard as they can get.

  ‘Here, turn down here,’ says Glenn, pointing at a road on the left. ‘His school is down there.’
<
br />   ‘We already tried the school,’ Hector says, going past the turning.

  ‘So bloody what? Maybe he’s arrived there since we last looked.’

  ‘Is that what we’re going to do then? Spend the entire night checking places we’ve already looked in?’

  ‘Oh and have you got a better idea, big brother?’ Glenn’s voice is getting louder.

  ‘I just don’t think it serves much purpose to keep going over the places we’ve already been.’ So is Hector’s.

  ‘Well, what do you bloody suggest then?’

  ‘I haven’t got a fucking clue, Glenn. Do you want to drive?’

  ‘No I don’t,’ he says grumpily. He needs to be able to peer constantly into all the dark shadowy corners where a tiny person might be crouching.

  ‘Right. Tell me where his friends live.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. What’s the point of that? He doesn’t know how to get there, even if I can remember.’

  ‘Glenn, give your boy a bit more credit, for crying out loud. Children soak up information like a sponge. He probably knows his way to lots of places just by paying attention when he sits in the car.’

  ‘Right, fine. Whatever. One lives in Albion Road, I remember that. One lives right near the school, in Mayfleet Close.’ He jerks as he spots something outside. He points to a turning on the right. ‘Wait, there’s a sweet shop down there that Sarah sometimes takes him to after school.’

  ‘We drove past it the first time we tried the school,’ Hector says with exaggerated patience. ‘And anyway, Glenn, we have to think about what motivated him to do this in the first place. What does he normally do if he wants sweets?’

  ‘All right, all right.’

  They lapse into uneasy silence, Glenn leaning forward in his seat, squinting into the darkness, his head turning all the time, to the right, the left, behind, back to the front. Hector wants to drive really fast, his pressing sense of urgency to rescue his little nephew flinging adrenalin through his veins, pumping his heart at twice its resting rate. But he knows he has to drive very slowly, so that they can spot every undersized shadow that cringes in a doorway or huddles in a hedge. His hands are gripping so tightly on the steering wheel, his fingers have gone white.